Today, more than 50 percent of the world’s population lives in cities. By 2050, some 75 percent will be urbanites. Future urban design will emphasize not only innovative architecture and engineering, but the environmental, health, and social aspects of city dwelling also. And the plans anticipate potential settlements beyond Earth -- Mars in particular. Justin Hollander is an internationally recognized expert on urban planning, with many academic and media contributions. He discusses the evolving concern for healthy urban design and the numerous challenges involved in this transition. Dr. Hollander also discusses his recent book on the prospect of Mars colonization: The First City on Mars: An Urban Planner’s Guide to Settling the Red Planet

Justin Hollander, PhD, FAICP is a Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning. He has worked in land use and environmental planning at the local, regional, and federal levels, most recently for the Public Buildings Service of the U.S. General Services Administration as a Presidential Management Fellow. His research examines how cities and regions manage physical change during periods of growth and decline and the cognitive, health, and social dimensions of community well-being. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners

Celebrating one of America’s greatest female novelists, this biography brings to life Willa Cather -- her artistry and endurance, her immigrant family and the prairies on they lived, and her trailblazing success as a journalist and writer.

In the early 20^th century, Willa Cather leapt into the forefront of American letters with the publication of her novels O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Antonia (1918). At the time, she was well into middle age. Her success followed years of working in journalism in Nebraska, brief spells of teaching, and editorial work on magazines. Chasing Bright Medusas is her story told by of another mature and highly accomplished writer, the award-winning biographer Benjamin Taylor, a lifelong lover of Willa Cather’s work. Taylor’s elegant exploration of her artistic endurance and of her early years and family, bring us back in time to portray vividly the challenges of being an immigrant family, a woman, and a literary trailblazer -- one the greatest authors of the twentieth century.

The approach of the 250th anniversary of American independence has led scholars to reexamine the British Empire and the events of the imperial crisis that are generally understood to have led to the American Revolution.   The panelists of the keynote session  “Could the Empire Have Been Saved?”  engage this issue by discussing the problems in the empire revealed by resistance to imperial authority in British America between 1764 and 1774.  What kind of empire was it?  What was the character of British policy in the colonies?   Was the imperial crisis really a general crisis that touched all colonies and all members of British American society?  What was driving events forward?  Was the American Revolution really inevitable?  And might better decisions have avoided it?   In engaging  these questions, the panelists aim to reveal the broader implications of new thinking about the British empire and the coming of the American Revolution.

This keynote is part of the conference on the theme "Empire and Its Discontent" hosted by The David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society and the Massachusetts Historical Society

Please note that in-person attendance has reached capacity and virtual attendance is the only option available for the keynote at this time. Click here to access the livestream on Youtube

Christopher Brown is a historian of Britain and the British empire, principally in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with special emphasis on the comparative history of slavery and abolition, and with secondary interests in the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Age of Revolutions. His current research centers on the history of European experience on the African coast at the height of the Atlantic slave trade, and continues early commitments to the rise and fall of slavery in the British Empire. Published work has received prizes in four distinct fields of study – American History, British History, Atlantic History, and the history of Slavery, Abolition, and Resistance. Completed projects include Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (University of North Carolina Press) and, with Philip D. Morgan, Arming Slaves: Classical Times to the Modern Age (Yale University Press). He has written as well for The Nation, The New York Times, and the London Review of Books, among other outlets.

Patrick Griffin teaches history at Notre Dame. He also directs the Keough-Naughton Institute. He has written a number of books on eighteenth-century Atlantic history, empire, and the era of the American Revolution. His most recent is: The Age of Atlantic Revolution: The Fall and Rise of a Connected World, which came out with Yale University Press.

Serena Zabin is a Professor of History at Carleton College; she is also immediate past President of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic. Professor Zabin is the author, most recently, of the prizewinning The Boston Massacre: A Family History (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), which was also named an Amazon Editor’s Choice for History in 2020. The research for this book covers four countries and was supported by numerous grants, including the National Endowment for the Humanities (twice) and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Access to oil and gas has long held an influence over the politics of individual nations and their relations with others. But as more countries move toward sustainable energy, and supply chain shortages affect the availability of oil and gas, how will these changes in energy industries impact relations geopolitics?

Join WorldBoston for a timely discussion of this topic with Sarah Emerson, founder and president of Energy Security Analysis, Inc (ESAI). The program will feature expert remarks from Ms. Emerson, live audience Q&A, and time for networking and discussion with other globally-oriented participants.

To celebrate the end of WorldBoston's 2023 programming, a special reception with light refreshments will be held in the Newsfeed Café from 7:00-7:30 PM.

This program is free and open to the public, but advance registration is required.
Click here to register to attend virtually.

Sarah Emerson is an expert on energy markets. In 1986, she began working for Energy Security Analysis, Inc. (ESAI) as a founding partner of its consulting practice. Sarah has developed many of ESAI's analytical tools for analyzing markets and forecasting prices and has conducted numerous studies on energy assets' market viability or profitability. She is particularly interested in the intersection of public policy, regulation, and markets. She has been a thought leader on topics ranging from the transfer of pollution in energy trade to the use of strategic stocks to the future of the Russian oil industry. In 2009, Sarah formed ESAI Energy, which manages ESAI's petroleum, alternative fuels, and green energy research and consulting business. She is currently the President of ESAI Energy.

Fintan O’Toole, one of Ireland’s leading public intellectuals, is a columnist for The Irish Times and Leonard L. Milberg ’53 visiting lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University. He also contributes to The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Granta, The Guardian, The Observer, and other international publications. His books on theater include works on William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Murphy. His books on politics include the bestsellers We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland; Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain; Ship of Fools; and Enough is Enough. In 2011, The Observer named O’Toole one of “Britain’s top 300 intellectuals.” He has received the A.T. Cross Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism, the Millennium Social Inclusion Award, the Journalist of the Year award from TV3 Studios in 2010, the Orwell Prize, the European Press Prize, and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the spring of 2023. In 2021, he published the #1 bestseller We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland, which won the Book of the Year Award at the Irish Book Awards and was selected for the New York Times's “10 Best Books of 2022.” O’Toole’s History of Ireland in 100 Objects, which covers 100 highly charged artifacts from the last 10,000 years, is currently the basis for Ireland’s postage stamps. He has recently been appointed official biographer of Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney.

This Lowell lecture will herald the opening of Seamus Heaney’s Afterlives, Boston College’s international symposium marking the tenth anniversary of the poet’s death.

Cosponsored by the Boston College Irish Studies Program and with the support of an ILA Major Grant.